
Town 





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site of the Crown Coffee House an 



d Fidelity Trust Co. Building in l; 



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Qtrnmn (toSet Snuar 



A Story of Old Boston 



BY 



WALTER K. WATKINS 

1 




Published by 

FIDELITY TRUST COMPANY 

Boston 

1917 



F73 

.s 



Copyright 1!»17 
Henderson & Ross 



Copyright 1917 
Fidelity Trust Company 



J 

©CU476739 
OCT 24 1917 



o 

IP 



^g prgmorb 



/« Presenting this history of one of Boston's 
old taverns we not only give to the reader its 
ancient history but also show how the locality 
developed, at an early day, from the mud flats 
of the water front to a business section and 
within the last quarter century has become the 
centre of a commercial district. This story of 
the site of the Fidelity Trust Company Building, 
once that of the Crown Coffee House, is from the 
manuscript history of "Old Boston Taverns" 
prepared by Mr. W. K. Watkins. Pictures and 
prints are from the collection of Henderson & 
Ross. Photographs by Paul J. Webber. 



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state Street, with the Crown Coffee House Site 
In the middle background, 1916 



The High Street from the Market Place 



Crown 



Coffee 



House 




[N 1635 the High Street leading from 
the Market Place to the water, 
with its dozen of low thatched- 
roofed-houses was a great con- 
trast to the tall office buildings 
of today's State Street. One 
of the latest ocean steamers 
would have filled its length, ending as it did, in 
the early days, at the waterside where Merchants 
Row now extends. 

At the foot of the Townhouse Street as it was 
later called, when the townhouse was built on 
the site of the Old State House, was the Town's 
Way to the flats. 

At low tide flats extended several hundred 
feet into the river or harbor. At an early day 
the first settlers along the waterfront were given 
leave to "wharf before" their properties into the 
harbor. Between the Town's Way before men- 
tioned and the Town Dock (Dock Square) were 
half a dozen properties with this privilege. Next 
the Town's Way was the warehouse and wharf 
of Edward Tyng, a prominent merchant of the 
town. 



Page seven 



Thomas \ enner, the Cooper 



Among his buildings was a brew house, and 
next north of him was the wharf of Thomas 
A'enner, cooper, who was kept busy on the beer 
barrels of his neighbor and the casks in which 
fish were shipped to England and the West 
Indies. \''enner had come to Salem in 1638, but 
evidently his restless religious spirit, which later 
brought him notoriety, caused his removal to 
Boston in 1644. In 1648, he with other coopers 
formed a Coopers' guild, similar to the trade 
guilds in England, the earliest trade organization 
in Boston. His religious beliefs prevented his 
admittance to the Boston Church and in October, 
1651, he sailed from Boston. The General Court 
said of him : *'\'enner (not to say whence he came 
to us) went out from us because he w^as not of 
us." In 1657, he had become leader of a band 
of fanatical religionists in London who styled 
themselves ''Fifth Monarchy Men." They held 
the belief that four great kingdoms, Assyrian, 
Persian, Macedonian and Roman, after dominion 
over the world, had passed away, and they were 
to establish a fifth, the new kingdom of Christ, 
the Millenium. 

After four years' disturbances, in Januar}-, 
1661, \'enner proclaimed the establishment of 
the kingdom of Jesus and proclaimed the killing 
of those who resisted his plans. With 500 fol- 
lowers he rushed through London's streets and 
killed innocent citizens. A force of volunteers 
and the city militia surrounded the remnant of 
\'enner's forces and twentv leaders were tried 



Page eight 



The Fifth Monarchy Riots 



and all but four sentenced to be drawn, hanged 
and quartered. A'enner, with nineteen wounds, 
received in encounters, was drawn on a sledge 
from Newgate to Coleman Street, where his 
meeting house was located. There he was 
hanged and quartered and the head of the 
Boston cooper was set upon a pole on London 
bridge. Edward Tyng, his neighbor, was more 
of a conformer to the religion of the town and 
accumulated worldly goods in his trade and 
mercantile pursuits. By trade he was an uphol- 
ster, and came from the parish of St. Michael's, 
Cornhill, London — Cornhill was the settlement 
in London of the Upholders or Fripperers, 
dealers in second-hand clothes. They were also 
dealers in secr)nd-hand skins and furs. By the 
middle of the 14th century they dealt in cushions, 
portable cupboards, curtains, feather beds, and 
carpets, and even furnishings for funerals. By 
the 17th century they had become furniture 
warehouse men. Besides this trade, Tyng had 
branched out and become one of the early 
merchants w^ho were the pioneer exporters of 
fish, oil and furs and importers of wines and the 
manufactured goods of Europe. His warehouse 
and those of his neighbors, along the waterside, 
gave in later years to the street the name of 
Merchants Row. He returned to England in 
1639 and was married to Frances Sears, of 
Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire. This place 
is near Dunstable in that county and the country 
place of Tyng, in Xew England, was given the 



Page nine 







>**' 






L__ 






'^^^ ^'^^ °.l ^^® Fidelity Trust Company's Building was 
ofE the end of Mr. Venner's Wharf in 1650 



Edward Tyng, Upholster 



name of Dunstable, in which town he died in 
1681. 

Thirty years previous, in 1652, he had sold, 
"my wharfe in Boston against the end of the 
Great Street and interest in the flats before it 
down to low water-mark," to James Everell, 
shoemaker. The property was bounded south 
by the town's way down upon the flats and north 
by the wharf and line of Mr. A^enner, east by the 
channel or low water-mark. 

James Everell, though styled shoemaker, was 
not of the more humble standing of the present 
day shoemaker but rather that of the manufac- 
turer of footwear on a large scale. He was often 
a selectman of the town and his land possessions 
were large and his house was near the town dock, 
a most important business section of the town. 

Everell later disposed of the property to John 
Evered, alias Webb, who came to Boston from 
Marlborough, in Wiltshire, England. His house 
in Boston was on the site of the Old Corner Book 
Store. In 1650, he was at Chelmsford traflicking 
wnth the Indians, and his property there he 
named "Draycott upon Merrimack," after the 
village of Draycot Foliat, six miles north of 
Marlborough, England. In 1668, while on a 
fishing frolic in Boston, he was drowned off the 
Castle on Castle Island. While catching a 
whale the line became coiled about his waist, 
and the whale, suddenly come to life, drew him 
overboard. 

In 1664 Evered sold his wharf to William 



Page eleven 



Whale Fishing in Boston Harbor 



Alford, a merchant, the property having a depth, 
from the front on the street to the rear, of 146 
feet. 

Alford came to Salem in 1634 from London, 
where he was a member of the Skinners' Com- 
pany, its members dealing in skins and furs. He 
had favored the party in Boston headed by Ann 
Hutchinson and dwelt for a while at New Haven. 
He came to Boston, purchased the wharf and 
died here in 1677. One of his daughters, Mary, 
married a Peter Butler, said to have been of the 
Marquis of Ormond's family in Ireland. On his 
death she married Hezekiah Usher, a bookseller, 
who dwelt opposite the town house on the north 
side of the street. Usher died, and she married 
a third husband, Samuel Nowell, who was of 
great prominence in the colony. A preacher, 
though not a settled minister, Nowell was chap- 
lain of the Alassachusetts regiment in King 
Philip's War, acting with great personal bravery. 
A member of both branches of the General 
Court, he became Treasurer of the Colony just 
before the Andros troubles in 1685. He then 
went to England with Increase Mather as agent 
of the colony, and died in London in 1688. 

His widow died in 1693, leaving the property, 
which had become known as Nowell's AVharf, to 
her children by her first husband, Peter Butler. 

On September 10, 1673, the selectmen of the 
town drew up a plan for the erecting of a wall 
or wharf upon the flats before the town to extend 
from the Sconce or battery at the base of Fort 



Page thirteen 



t 





Str 





m'wm 


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[m 






Boston's First Land Improvement 



Hill to Scarlett's Wharf, at the foot of Fleet 
Street, at the North End. This was to secure 
the town from the fireships of an enemy. This 
wall was to be 2,200 feet in length and to be a 
breastwork 14 or 15 feet high with guns mounted 
on the same. Some fifty shore owners agreed to 
perform their part in the plan and were given 
rights to erect wharves and warehouses in the 
enclosed space. William Alford's proportion in 
the project was one hundred feet, and the next 
quarter century was to witness the first great 
improvement in the growth of the town's area, 
and was done by the proprietors incorporated 
by an act of the General Court in 1681. 

By this plan the wharf owners were entitled to 
build up to a line called "the circular line," the 
space between this line and the sea wall forming 
an inner harbor. In 1707, Mr. Henry Bering, 
a merchant of the town, proposed to the select- 
men — "That it would be a benefit to this Town 
and tend to the encourragement of the Trade 
thereof to have a wharffe built from the Lower 
end of the Town House Street to run from thence 
to the Out-Wharves, or Low Water mark. And 
that the Town do grant their right in ye flatts 
unto such persons who shall undertake to be at 
the charge thereof." The result was that after 
agitation and action on the rights of the shore 
owners in building wharves within the sea wall, 
which had gradually gone to decay, the Boston 
Pier or Long Wharf was erected. 

Historians and others, describing the project, 



Page fifteen 



yyia^ (p^^ajo^^^e 









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51 




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61, 



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Boston Pier or Long Wharf 



state that the wharf was to run from the end of 
King Street to the Circular Line and to low 
water mark. The agreement of the proprietors, 
as given in the town records, was, "at our own 
cost and charge erect and build a wharf, with a 
sufficient Common Shore (at the Approbation 
of the Selectmen) at the end of King Street to 
the Circular Line as delineated by the Plan, 
and that from thence we will Erect, build and main- 
taine a wharfe/' etc. (13 Mch. 1709/10.) 

This shows that the shore or flats were 
improved by preparing the bottom of King- 
Street to connect, as a highway, with the new 
wharf, which was to begin at the Circular Line. 

This agreement was entered into by Captain 
Oliver Noyes and five others, the original pro- 
prietors. Later others joined the project, among 
them was Jonathan Belcher, to whom was 
granted numbers one and two at the King 
Street end of the wharf. Belcher was the son 
of Andrew Belcher, an opulent merchant of 
Boston. After graduating at the age of seven- 
teen from Harvard, in 1699, the son travelled 
abroad many years. He was a member of the 
Council for five years and agent in England for 
the Province. He became governor in 1730, 
and held the office for eleven years. In 1747, he 
was made governor of New Jersey, and held the 
office till his death in 1757, On his allotment on 
Long Wharf he built, after the fire of 1711, the 
wooden building to be known for over half a 
centurv as the Crown Coffee House. 



Page seventeen 




Governor Belcher who built the Crown Coff.e House 



The Crown Coffee House Built 



The Crown seems to be one of the oldest of 
English signs. We read of it as early as 1467, 
when a certain Walter Walters, who kept the 
Crown Inn in Cheapside, made an innocent 
pun, saying he would make his son heir to the 
Crown, which so displeased his gracious majesty, 
King Edward IV., that he ordered the man to be 
put to death for high treason. 

The Crown Inn at Oxford was kept by Dav- 
enant (Sir William Davenant's father). Shake- 
speare, in his frequent journeys between London 
and his native place, generally put up at this 
inn, and the malicious world said that young 
Davenant (the future Sir William) was some- 
what nearer related to him than as a godson only. 
One day, when Shakespeare had just arrived, 
and the boy was sent for from school to see him, 
a master of one of the colleges, prett}^ well ac- 
quainted with the affairs of the family, asked 
the boy why he was going home in so much 
haste, who answered that he was going to see 
his godfather Shakespeare. 'Tie, child," said 
the old gentleman, "why are you so superfluous? 
Have you not learnt yet that you should not 
use the name of God in vain?" 

The coffee house must not be dismissed with 
a cursory mention. It might indeed at that time 
have been not improperly called a most import- 
ant political institution. No Parliament had sat 
for years. The municipal council of the city had 
ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public 
meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of 



Page nineteen 



The Crown Inn in England 



the modern machinery of agitation had not yet 
come into fashion. Nothing resembling the 
modern newspaper existed. In such circum- 
stances the coffee-houses were the chief organs 
through which the public opinion of the metro- 
polis vented itself. 

The first of these establishments had been set 
up in the time of the Commonwealth by a 
Turkey merchant, who had acquired among the 
Mohammedans a taste for their favorite bever- 
age. The convenience of being able to make 
appointments in any part of the town, and of 
being able to pass evenings socially at a very 
small charge, was so great that the fashion 
spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle 
class went daily to his coffee-house to learn the 
news and to discuss it. Every coffee-house had 
one or more orators to whose eloquence the crowd 
listened with admiration, and who soon became 
what the journalists of our time have been called, 
a Fourth Estate of the realm. The court had 
long seen with uneasiness the growth of this new 
power in the state. An attempt had been made, 
during Danby's administration, to close the 
coff'ee-houses. But men of all parties missed 
their usual places of resort so much that there 
was a universal outcry. The government did 
not venture, in opposition to a feeling so strong 
and general, to enforce a regulation of which the 
legality might well be questioned. Since that 
time ten years had elapsed, and during those 
years the number and influence of the coffee- 



Page twenty 



The Grown Inn in England 



houses had been constantly increasing. For- 
eigners remarked that the coffee-house was that 
which especially distinguished London from all 
other cities; that the coffee-house was the Lon- 
doner's home, and that those who wished to find 
a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he 
lived in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but 
whether he frequented the Grecian or the 
Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these 
places who laid down his penny at the bar. Yet 
every rank and profession and every shade of 
relig'ious and political opinion had its own head- 
quarters. There were houses near Saint James's 
Park where fops congregated, their heads and 
shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not 
less ample than those which are now worn by 
the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House 
of Commons. The wig came from Paris; and 
so did the rest of the fine gentleman's ornaments, 
his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the 
tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The con- 
versation was in that dialect which, long after it 
had ceased to be spoken in fashionable circles, 
continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to 
excite the mirth of theatres. The atmosphere 
was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in 
any other form than that of richly scented snuff 
was held in abomination. If any clown, ignor- 
ant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, 
the sneers of the whole assembly and the short 
answers of the waiters soon convinced him that 
he had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, 



Pdse titenty-one 



The Grown Inn in England 



would he have had far to go. For, in general, 
the coffee-rooms reeked with tobacco like a 
guard-room; and strangers sometimes expressed 
their surprise that so many people should leave 
their own fireside to sit in the midst of eternal 
fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking 
more constant than at Will's. That celebrated 
house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow 
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the 
talk was about poetical justice and the unities of 
place and time. There was a faction for Perrault 
and the moderns, a faction for Boileau and the 
ancients. One group debated whether Paradise 
Lost ought not to have been in rhyme. To 
another an envious poetaster demonstrated that 
Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted 
from the stage. Under no roof was a greater 
variety of figures to be seen. There were earls 
in stars and garters, clergymen in cassocks and 
bands; pert Templars, sheepish lads from the 
universities, translators and index-makers in 
ragged coats of frieze. 

The great press was to get near the chair 
where John Dryden sat. In winter that chair 
was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in 
summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the 
Laureate, and to hear his opinion of Racine's 
last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, 
was esteemed a privilege. A pinch from his 
snuffbox was an honor sufficient to turn the head 
of a young enthusiast. There were coffee-houses 
where the first medical men might be consulted. 



Page twenty-three 



The Grown Inn in England 



Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, 
rose to the largest practice in London, came 
daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, 
from his house in Bow Street, then a fashionable 
part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be 
found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries, 
at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee- 
houses where no oath was heard, and where 
lank-haired men discussed election and reproba- 
tion through their noses; Jew coffee-houses, 
where dark-eyed money-changers from \ enice 
and from Amsterdam greeted each other; and 
Popish coft'ee-houses where, as good Protestants 
believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups, another 
great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the 
King. 

On the site occupied by the present Bank of 
England there used to stand four taverns; one 
of them bore the sign of the Crown, and was 
certainly in a good line of business, for, accord- 
ing to Sir John Hawkins, it was not unusual in 
those toping days to draw a butt (120 gallons) in 
half-pints in the course of a single morning. 

About the same period there was another 
Crown Tavern in Duck Lane, West Smithfield. 
One of the rooms in that house was decorated by 
Isaac Fuller ( ob. 1672), with pictures of the 
Muses, Pallas, Mars, Ajax, Ulysses, etc, Ned 
Ward praises them highly in his "London Spy." 
"The dead figures appeared with such lively 
majesty that they begot reverence in the spec- 
tators towards the awful shadows." Such 



Page tueutyfouT 



Thomas Selby, Periwigmaker 



painted rooms in taverns were not uncommon 
at that period. 

The tirst hmdlord of the Crown was Thomas 
Selby, who was admitted an inhabitant of the 
town February 20, 1709-10, Jonathan Belcher 
being- his security. By occupation Selby was a 
periwigmaker, l)ut with it combined his duties 
as host of the Crown, where he was licensed to 
sell strong drink as an inn holder. The Coffee 
House was not alone a place of refreshment, but 
was also the place for vendue or auction sales 
of all sorts. 

"Lately taken from the Crown Coft'ee House 
in Boston a good Beaver Hatt, never dress'd, 
with a hole burnt in the brim about the bigness 
of a pea. Whoever brings the same to Mr. 
Selby at the said Coffee House shall receive 
10s. reward." 

"To be sold by Thomas Selby at the Crown 
Coft'ee House, All sorts of good wines from the 
pipe to the pint on reasonable terms." 

"At 5 o'clock at publick vendue at the Crown 
Coft'ee House, Long Wharf, a Collection of 
Choice and Curious Books of Divinity, History, 
Poetry, Voyages and Travels. N. B. To be 
sold at the same time and place a Collection of 
Curious Pamphlets, Plays and Maps." This 
was not, however, his only connection with 
literary products. In the New England Courant 
(Franklin's paper) from 17 July to 28 August, 
1725, there was advertised "A new and correct 
prospect of the town . . . curiously engraved." 



Page twenty-five 



Selby's View of Boston 



The title of the view was "A South East View of 
ve Great Town of Boston in New England in 
America," and was dedicated to Governor 
Samuel Shute by Thos. Selby and William Price. 
In the view are fifty references to places of note 
or interest in the town. A Ust of them is given 
in the key below the view. Number 25 is noted 
as 'Thomas Selby's Cofifee House," and depicts 
a three-story building of the period at the head 

of Long Wharf. r t . 

Selby married Mehitable, daughter of James 
Bill of Boston and Pulling Point (Winthrop). 
In 1720, Selby and his wife mortgaged his hold- 
ins:s he had bought adjoining Mr. Jonathan 
Belcher's house and land called the Crown 
Coffee House to his mother-in-law and brother- 
in-law, Mehitable Bill and North Ingram. 
Selby died at the Crown Cofifee House, 19 bep- 
tember, 1727, aged 54. As he was an active 
member of Kings Chapel and vestryman from 
1722 to 1727, he was buried in a tomb m or near 
the chapel. At the time of his decease there was 
living with him WiUiam Burgis, the engraver 
of the view previously described, and also ot 
"A South Prospect of ye Flourishing City of 
New York," done in 1717. Besides a prosperous 
trade and an interest of £659 from the estate of 
Selby, the widow had property in her own right. 
Burgis won this prize and married the widow, 
after a widowhood of one year, and petitioned 
to be a taverner at the Crown Coffee House, 
which was allowed in July, 1729. 



Page twenty-seven 



Edward Lutwych, Taverner 



In the following July, 1730, he was disallowed 
and in his place Edward Lutwych was allowed 
to the "Crown Coft'y House." In the following 
winter, after a series of lawsuits against him, 
Burgis is noted as being out of the Province. 
In 1736, his wife, Mehitable, petitions that her 
husband, having got what he could of her estate 
into his hands, about live years since, left her 
and has never returned into the Province again, 
and she prayed a divorce. After being deserted 
the widow had other hard luck, was arrested for 
selling liquor without a license and keeping a 
noisy and disorderly house. This was not, how- 
ever, a blot on the reputation of the "Crown," 
as the wndow had left its management and the 
landlord was then Edward Lutwych. Lutwych 
was of a prominent family of that name in 
Shropshire, England. A brother, Lawrence 
Lutwych, of Boston, had been a distiller of 
Radnor, South Wales, and had married Sarah, 
daughter of Deacon James Lindall of Salem. 
Edward married for a first wife in 1727 Thankful, 
widow of Joseph Parmenter. On her death he 
married Elizabeth, widow of David Craigie, 
formerly Elizabeth Taylor, one of the heirs of 
James Taylor, Treasurer of the Province, 1693- 
1714. This shows his social standing, and as a 
subscriber to the New England Chronology of 
the Rev. Thomas Prince he evidently had literary 
tastes. He was one of several Boston people 
who, in 1735, petitioned for land at what was 
later Grav, Maine. In 1740 he w^as a subscriber 



Page twenty-nine 



Widow Ann Clements 



to the Massachusetts Land Bank. In 1731, 
Lutwych had leased land at Hopkinton, Mass., 
and about 1735 he left the Crown Coffee House 
and resided at Hopkinton till his death in 1745. 

His successor at the Crown, in 1735, was the 
widow, Ann Clements, who had previously re- 
tailed strong drinks around the corner opposite 
the ''Golden Ball" in Merchants Row. She was 
a daughter of Matthew and Susanna (Walker) 
Jones, and married, in 1714, Jeremiah Clements, 
felmonger or hatter. They had several children, 
and in 1726 she petitioned for a divorce, having 
been deserted, two years previous, b}^ her hus- 
band, who was then at Marblehead, he being 
interested in other women and having assaulted 
her. At that time she was employed by Luke 
Vardy, the landlord of the Exchange Tavern. 
Her experience there fitted her to run the Crown, 
her husband having died in 1732. Soon after 
taking the Crown she married William Swords, 
mariner, and kept the tavern while he followed 
the sea for a living. 

In 1741, Swords leased a shop near the Town 
Dock, and his wife evidently gave up the Crown 
for a year in 1742 and later returned. In 1750 
she stated she had kept a tavern for twenty 
years and had kept the Crown Coffee House for 
the past ten years. 

In 1742 Samuel Wethered kept the "Crown" 
for about a year; from there he removed to the 
"Rose and Crown" Tavern on the south-west 
corner of King (State) and Pudding Lane 



Page thirty 



Samuel Wethered, Innkeeper 

(Devonshire Street). In 1743 he kept the Bunch 
nf Graces on the corner of King Street and 
l^kerKne (Kilby Street), when "the «^^ 
loyal and hospitable Society of Ca hcoe m.t 
there that year. He took part in the 1745 expe 
ditTon to Louisburg, and after its capture kept 

a tavern there. which 

He served in the expedition of l/sS whicn 
went to Fort Craven and the Oneida Carrying 
Place being the Heutenant of the Boston Com^ 
prny!' unde? Captain Richard Atkins. In 1759 
his widow, Sarah (Thornton) Wethered, peti- 
don^d the General Court to sell the liquors left 
in the house at his decease. „ , , 

In 1749, Andrew, son of Governor Bdcher, as 
his attorney, sold the Crown Coftee House to 
Richard Smith, innkeeper. Smith in 1/38 had 
kept the Greyhound Tavern, which stood on 
Wash ngton Street, opposite Vernon Street, 
Roxbury. When purchased by Richard Smith, 
U was then still in the occupation of the w'dow 
Wds The house, a double one, was 40 by 30 
the frontage on the south was 40 feet on Long 
Whar?, making a corner with King Street on the 
west, the depth of the building being 30 feet. 

In 1747, Robert ShiUcock was cook on His 
Majesty's ship Launceston and his wie, Hannah 

wai li Jng at Ply-"V'Vrtr:hip'^of the^BriTish 
^rvrof°700"t:ns'afd';"coSen-t of about 

^^WeTnd ShiUcock in Boston in 1750, as in that 



Page thirty-one 



Robert Shillcock, His Majesty's Cook 



year he succeeded Mrs. Swords, and the next 
year purchased the Crown Tavern estate from 
Richard Smith, and the property was held by 
his family until its demolition during the Revo- 
lution. During that period it had several 
landlords and landladies. In 1726 Rebecca 
Coffin kept it. She was probably the widow of 
Gayer Coffin of Nantucket, who came to Boston 
and in 1733 married Rebecca Parker. 

In 1766 it was kept by William Wheat. He 
was a son of Dr. Samuel Wheat of Newton, and 
grandson of Moses Wheat of Concord. He was 
born in 1741, and started life as a trader in 
Boston. His mother, Hannah (Hovey) Wheat, 
was the daughter of Joseph Hovey, who kept 
the Blue Anchor Tavern, Cambridge, near the 
Market Place (the northeast corner of Dunster 
and Mount Auburn Streets) from 1705 to 1709. 
Though he might have inherited a taste to serve 
the public as a landlord. Wheat did not attain a 
financial success, and after a year removed to a 
house of William Edes on Fish (North) Street. 
In 1767 Richard Bradford took the Crown. He 
married, in 1763, Rachael, daughter of Caleb and 
Rebecca (Lobdell) Loring. The tavern on 
Minot's T. Wharf was kept by Nicholas Lobdell 
in 1754. Mary Maverick applied to the keeper 
of the Crown in 1772, but was refused. She was 
the mother of Samuel Maverick, one of the Bos- 
ton Massacre victims. In 1774, Thomas Waldo 
was licensed to retail at his shop on Long Wharf. 
Robert Shillcock, owner of the Crown, had two 



Page thirty-three 



Sii^fi of 
WILLIAM WILLIAMS 



,oweft Prices, by Wholefale Oi . ...^n, for Ca 



Mathematical Inftruments. 

William Williams 

Mathematical Infirument Maker, 



His to fell at his Shop in King-Street, two Doors Eaft of the 
Sign of Admiral Vernon, near the Head of the Long- 
Wharf, BOSTON. 

A Large Airortment of Hadley's and Davis's Quadrants, 
hanging and handing CompafTcs, in Brafs and Wood I 
Gauging and Surveying Inftruments, Cafes of Inftruments, 
Jar-c and fmall Perlpedive Glaffes, in Ivory, Wood and Filh- 
fkin, plotting Scales and Protraftors, Gunter Scales and Di- 
viders, Surveyors Chains, Artificial Magnets with Cafes, Sand 
GlalTcs from z Hours to \ Minute, Inftruments of a new 
ConftruCiion to meafure Boardt, Quarter Waggoners, Atkin- 
fon's Epitome, Wilfon's ditto, Pattron's Navigation, Seamans 
AlTiftants, Callendcrs, Mariners Compares redified. Young 
Man's Companion, Journal Books, Ink-Powder, Quills & Pa- 
per, an Aifortment of Brafs Pocket Compaffcs with & with- 
out Cards, Box Rules, Slates and Pencik, Penknives, Jacle 
knives, &c. 

All Sorts of Mathematical Inftruments are made ana re- 
paired by the above William Williams. Those who will 
favour him with their Cuftom, may depend upon being well 
ufed, and have their Work done with Fidelity and Dllpatch. 




N-AWAY from his Miijier John Langdon, :kc ze^ 
'"Hant " Indented S' 



{Boston Gazette, March I2y r~Jo) 



William Wheat, Trader 



daughters born in Boston; JMary in 1752 and 
Joyce in 1754. Joyce married, in 1773, William 
Williams, a mathematical instruments maker. 
After the evacuation in 1776 the selectmen 
licensed various persons to retail liquors. "Wil- 
liams and V^incent to retail at his shop in King- 
Street." This refers most probably to William 
Williams and George A'incent. The latter after- 
wards was licensed to sell at Scarlett's Wharf, 
where he died in 1782. 

In 1782 the widow, Hannah Shillcock, died, 
having survived her husband eighteen years. 
An account of her husband's estate, of which she 
was administratrix, shows that the Crown Coffee 
House had disappeared before 17 ]\Iarch, 1783, 
and the land was then valued at £120. Its 
disappearance is accounted for by a lire which 
occurred on 20 September, 1780. At two in the 
afternoon a fire broke out on Long Wharf, 
destroying the warehouse of Pitts and Call, 
Eliot's tobacco store and several other buildings, 
including the Crown Coffee House, In October, 
1787, there had been erected two new stores on 
the site of the Crown at a cost of £495. These 
were erected by William W^illiams and Benjamin 
Brown of Wells, Maine, who had half an interest 
in the property. 

Benjamin Brown married, 28 March, 1796, 
Mary Frances Selby. He is said to have married 
Eunice Orne of Lynnfield in N(.)vember, 1795, 
but the fact is that his intention to marry her 
was published on that date, and after his mar- 



Page thirty-five 





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North End of Pemberton Square In 1875 
Site of Court House on the left 




View of upper part of State Street in 1S04 



William Williams, Mathematical Instruments 



riage to Miss Selby, Miss Orne married, 23 
December, 1796, Rev, Aaron Green of Maiden. 

The east half of the Crown Coffee House 
estate, Number 2 Long Wharf, owned by Ben- 
jamin Brown in 1798, was occupied by Joseph 
Baxter, junior. It was valued at the same 
figures and was of the same size as the west half, 
Baxter was in the boot and shoe business, the 
same occupation as the owner of the site 150 
years previous, James Everell, the shoemaker. 
Baxter had previously been in partnership with 
Christopher Marshall at 5 Marlboro Street, pres- 
ent location Washington, between School and 
Winter Streets. Marshall was a captain in his 
brother. Col. Thomas Marshall's Regiment in 
the Revolution. Baxter was also a military man, 
but without the experiences of his partner. His 
services consisted of membership in the Ancient 
and Honorable Artillery Company. He was 
about forty years younger than his partner, 
Marshall, and died in Fayette, Maine, in 1828. 

Besides the store 2 Long Wharf, Brown owned 
several other stores on the Wharf and an interest 
in the Island Wharf on the south side of Long 
Wharf. He went to Philadelphia from Wells, 
and died there suddenly in January, 1802. His 
widow, Mary Frances Brown, married Lewis 
Lecesne of New York. In later years she was a 
resident of Rio Janeiro. A daughter, Hannah 
Fisher Brown, married about 1810 to Francis 
Desire Mason of Belleville, N. J., received the 
Long Wharf property from her father just pre- 
vious to his death. 



Page thirty-seven 




view looking down State Streot in ISSO 




Interior of Store Room of Stearns & Crosby. Chatham Street, corner of 
Chatham Row. (Has not been changed since 1832) 



Benjamin Brown, of Wells, Me. 

It was on the death of Benjamin Brown in 
1802 that the wooden stores were replaced by 
brick structures. ^ 

Williams occupied the store, ^^^^J^^^^^^^ne 
Lono- Wharf, for his trade as a mathematical 
rnst^ument maker, and resided on Quaker Lane 
(Congress Street.) He died Id January, 1/92, 
at the age of forty-four years. 

To be Sold. 
By order of the Supreme Judicial Court at 
Pubiick Vendue. On Friday the 19th ms . 
(instead of the 5th as has been advertized) 
^ore No. 1 on Long Wharf being the Estate of 
the late WiUiam WiUiams, deceased. (Colum- 
bian Centinel, 9 March, 1793.) 

The purchaser was John Osborn. The prop- 
erty valued at £1060, lawful money, was ot 
wood, and had a frontage of 20 feet on Long 
Wharf and ran back 30 feet to Spear s What t. 
In 1^8 the store was taxed to John Osborn for 
$2800.00. 

John Osborn. 
Imported in the Ships Minerva and Mary 
from London. Paints, Painters' Brushes, knnes 
copal varnish, glaziers diamonds, ^^'^, J^^^^l 
Clock and Window Glass all sizes at his store 
Number One Long- Wharf and his store at the 
South End. (Columbian Centinel. 19 Nov cm 
ber. 1794.) 



Page thirty-nine 




Crown Coffee House and Fidelity Trust Co. Site in 1872 




State Street in 1835 



John Osborn, Painter 



Osborn was a painter and dealer in paints and 
oils. His family was engaged in that business 
in Boston for nearly a century. His father's 
shop and house in 1789 was on Orange Street 
(Washington Street south of Essex) on the 
south corner of Nassau, now Common Street. 
His uncle Thomas, a painter, was at the North 
End, on Prince Street. The elder John died in 
1792, and the son succeeded to the business, re- 
siding on Atkinson Street (Congress Street), 
then a new residential section of Fort Hill. A 
few years later he purchased and resided at num- 
ber 18 Franklin Place (Franklin Street), oppo- 
site the Tontine Crescent, the large brick block 
which had caused the street to be a select neigh- 
borhood. A century ago he invested in lands at 
West Boston on Olive (Mt. Vernon) Street and 
on Cambridge Street, where he resided just 
before his death in 1819. Though only forty- 
eight years old, he left property valued at over 
$100,000, a goodly estate a hundred years ago. 
John Osborn, junior, married, in 1792, Catherine 
Macaulay Barbour, who after his death resided 
at 26 Fayette Place (Tremont Street, between 
West and Boylston Streets). 

The Osborn property on Cambridge Street 
was situated between Chambers and Lynde 
Streets, and some of the houses built on it by the 
Osborns survived, in the 20th century. The 
property was left to three children, George 
Barbour Osborn, Catherine, who married Alex- 
ander Mactier of New York, and Lydia, who 



Page forty-one 




view from Fidelity Trust Co. Site In 1916 looking west 
towards the Old State House 



Hevvins and Tisdale 



was the second wife of Philip \^erplanck Hoff- 
man, uncle of the late Dean Hoffman of New 
York. A daughter of Lydia (Osborn) Hoffman 
married the Vicomte Treilhard of Paris, and had 
daughters who married into the French nobility. 

In 1824, George B. Osborn, son of John, sold 
the store. Number One Long Wharf, to Simon 
Kollock Hewins. Mr. Hewins was a native of 
Sharon. He married Caroline, daughter of 
Colonel Daniel Brown. Mr. Hewins was in the 
leather business, and in 1825 took as a partner 
Mace Tisdale. The firm of Hewins and Tisdale 
not only dealt in skins and hides, but also in 
"shoe notes," Mr. Tisdale, as a director in 
the New England Bank, having facilities for 
handling that kind of securities. In 1844 Hewins 
transferred to Tisdale his interest in the property 
including the adjoining store, 2 Long Wharf, 
which Hewins acquired in 1833 from Levi 
Bartlett. 

Mr. Bartlett bought 2 Long Wharf in 1821 
from Benjamin Brown's heirs, having occupied 
it previously as a tenant for several years. Mr. 
Bartlett was a dealer in West India Goods. 
For diff'erent years he had as partners Aaron 
Woodman and Eben T. Farrington, and occupied 
stores at other locations (7 South Market Street 
and 7 Long Wharf) ; but in 1849 he returned to 
2 Long Wharf as Levi Bartlett & Co. In 1858 
the location became 146 and 148 State Street. 
Later the firm became Farrington (Eben T.). 
Tozier (Andrew S. ) and Hall (Elven D.j 



Page forty-three 




/ ; 






31 -f ifi- i 



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a 1 1 






.' m 






Occupants in the Last Century 



In 1885 Dudley Hall, grocer, occupied the 
store. 

In 1835, Henry Hitchcock and Nathaniel C. 
Nash, grocers, were located at 2 Long Wharf, 
and in 1845 Isaac Nash, grocer, was to be found 
there. The building at the corner of Chatham 
Street, Number One Long Wharf, was occupied 
by its owners, Tisdale and Hewins, till 1844, 
when they removed to 82 Water Street. At that 
time Mr. Hewins resided on the corner of 
Boylston Street and Head Place, a locality at 
the present time wholly devoted to business 
houses. His partner, Mr. Tisdale, resided at 15 
Rowe Street, now known as Chauncy Street. 
The cellar of 1 Long Wharf was occupied for 
many years by victuallers who supplied the 
wants of many laboring in the vicinity or visitors 
to the Custom House or Market. Among the 
occupants were Phineas Sawyer (1825), Constant 
Southworth and Mark Nutter (1835). In 1844 
Stephen S. & E. W. Stone, druggists, succeeded 
Tisdale and Hewins as occupants. In 1854, 
Alfred B. Hall & Co. (William F. Matchett and 
Daniel Perkins, junior) removed from 57 Broad 
Street to 1 Long Wharf. They were in business 
as merchandise brokers, and, in 1865, F. N. 
Thatcher was the junior partner. Here also 
was located Hall, Caldwell & Co., of which Seth 
Caldwell, junior, was a resident of Philadelphia. 
A. B. Hall & Co. occupied the corner till 1902. 

In 1903, William Bond & Son, Chronometers, 
removed to 148 State Street from the location 



Page forty-five 



William Bond, Chronometers 



next door, where they had been for several years. 
Before that they were at 112 State, moving there 
from 97 Water Street. At the time of the Great 
Fire of 1872 they w^ere at 17 Congress Street. 
Their business was located on this last street 
for 66 years. The firm dates back to 1793, when 
William Bond, watchmaker, was located at 32 
Marlborough (Washington) Street. 

In 1897, as an heir of the Tisdale estate, there 
was conveyed the buildings 144, 146 and 148 
State Street to John Tisdale Bradlee, a son of 
John Rice Bradlee and Frances Ann Tisdale, the 
only child of Mace Tisdale. His mother, a sister 
of the wnfe of S. K. Hewins, was a daughter of 
Lieut. Col. Daniel Brown, a Boston printer. 

It is interesting to note the rise of the values 
of real estate on State Street, in the vicinity of 
the Custom House, as evidenced in the assessed 
valuations of the sites 144, 146 and 148 State 
Street for the last century. The two wooden 
stores, 1 and 2 Long Wharf, valued at $2,800 
each in 1798, had by 1815 been replaced by two 
brick stores. 1 Long Wharf in 1815 was assessed 
for $12,000; 2 Long Wharf was taxed for $6,000. 

In 1825 Number One, the corner, was assessed 
at $16,000, Number two at $11,600. In 1835 
the figures had risen to $18,000 and $12,000, the 
result of the opening of Chatham Row in 1827. 
In 1845 the corner building $28,000 and the next 
building $18,000. 

In 1855 both had increased in ten years in 
value $7,000 to $35,000 and $25,000. At the end 



Page forty-six 



Valuations for 100 Years 



of the Civil War in 1865, 1 Long Wharf had 
become 144 State Street, valued at $55,000, and 
2 Long- Wharf was 146 and 148 State, valued at 
$33,000. After the Great Fire of 1872, the values 
as shown in 1875 were $65,000 and $38,000. 

In 1885 a depreciation is shown to $40,000 for 
the corner, 144, and $31,000 for numbers 146 and 
148. 

In ten years, in 1895, a slight rise appears to 
$56,000 and $44,000. Of this the valuations of 
the buildings were $5,000 each. 

In 1905 the property had doubled in value 
during the ten years. The valuation of $100,000 
for the two buildings in 1895 had become 
$202,000 in 1905. The past ten years has added 
another $100,000, and from its near location to 
the Custom House an increase may be expected 
for future decades. 



Page forty-seven 






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New Fidelity Trust Company Building 
Ereoted on Site of Crown Coffee House 



Page forty-nine 




MR. JAMES G. FERGUSON 
President Fidelity Trust Company 



THE FIDELITY TRUST CO. 



New times demand new men, new methods, 
new ideas, new institutions, and so as the old 
Crown Coffee House gave way to buildings 
adapted to the spirit of the time, the march of 
progress again demands that these, in turn, give 
way to a building commensurate with 20th 
centurv conditions. Accordingly there came 
into being the Fidelity Building, burrowing deep 
into the bowels of the earth, far deeper than was 
the old Crown Coft'ee House in height, with 
foundations to keep back the waters of the 
nearbv harbor, upon which rested the piles of 
the Crown Coffee House, and lifting its head 
high into the air, eleven stories above the ground. 
Fiftv vears ago, one would hardly hazard 
the guess that the old Crown Coft'ee House 
site would be adapted for a structure such as 
the Fidelitv Building. State Street, at that 
point, hardlv warranted an investment in an 
office building of over three quarters of a milhon 
dollars; in fact, within the last half decade, such 
an investment would have been considered the 
dream of the speculator rather than the judgment 
of men directing the aff'airs of an institution, con- 
sisting of the conservative element of metropoli- 
tan life: accordingly one might be led to ask, 
"Whv now?" Then the answer. 



Page fiity-one 




FRANK F. McLEOD 
Treasurer Fidelity Trust Company 



Bank consolidations of the last two decades 
have gradually removed, from the great market 
section of Boston, financial institutions which 
we e "ormerly in close personal touch with this 
dass of their'^ustomers, who by the very nature 
of their daily vocations, were men who rubbed 
elbows with their neighbors. They bought their 
goods from the farmer direct, P™r','''^"-Thrv 
accustomed to conventional methods. Ihey 
so d their wares to the every-day grocer who 
bv dealing direct with the consumer, was obliged 
to brhig himself close to his customers thus, by 
he verv nature of this relationship, the market 
man required close personal contact with all men 
not excepting the banker, to whom he entrusted 
his funds for safe keeping. 

Recognizing their own need, a numbei of these 
market men met together -"^ decided to organ- 
ize a banking institution which would more 
truly represent that group of business men o 
which they were a part. Thus, >" the eady part 
of 1913 was born an idea— an idea which cul 
minated. on May 15. 1913, in the opening to the 
nublic of the Fidelity Trust Company. 
•^ The new bank engaged quarters in the Boaid 
of Trade building, formerly °«"P>f'l^^''>. ;" 
institution now merged with another State Strert 
Bank The first president was Mi. Leonard H. 
Rhodes a man known throughout the length 
fnd breadth of the City as one of Boston smos 
successful grocers; a selt-imde "«"^"d °"e 
who, for many years, had been on the closest 
Tnd most intimate terms with the men "'the 
market district. Feeling the strain of the added 



Page fifty-three 




EDWARD C. DONNELLY 
Vice-President 



duties thus thrust upon him, Mr. Rhodes, at the 
end of the first year, asked to be relieved of his 
office. 

Again, however, Destiny came to the rescue, 
w^hen Mr. Rhodes consented to act as one of the 
vice-presidents. After much persuasion, the 
directors succeeded in securing a man to fill the 
vacancy thus created in the person of Mr. 
James G. Ferguson, one of two brothers who 
had built up the largest baking business in the 
East; a man who also had close personal rela- 
tions with the group of men who had first 
conceived the idea of the institution, and thus, 
through the four years of its existence, the 
Fidelity Trust Co. has justified its being. 

Problems have presented themselves, but they 
have been solved; for the Trust Company has 
proved itself a necessity to the community which 
it serves. In no way is this more apparent, 
perhaps, than in the steady growth of its de- 
posits, which have been at the rate of one million 
and a half dollars per year. 

When first organized, the capital of the 
Fidelity Trust Company was five hundred 
thousand dollars, with a surplus of one hundred 
thousand dollars. The strong, healthy growth 
of its business, however, soon indicated that a 
larger capital was necessary, and, two years 
ago, the stockholders voted to increase the 
capital to one million dollars, with two hundred 
thousand dollars surplus, and the additional 
capital was soon over-subscribed. So successful 
was the growth of the institution that once more 
it became necessary to increase the capital, 



Page fifty-five 




JAMES D. HENDERSON 
Vice-President 



and the figure was placed at two million, wnth 
$400,000 surplus, and this issue was over-sub- 
scribed. Not even then, however, did those 
guiding its affairs dream that, within a short 
year, the growth of the bank would demand 
greatly enlarged quarters, but again were the 
ideas of its founders justified, and then, as new 
times demanded new conditions, it resulted in 
the erection of this beautiful new building of 
limestone and steel, designed by Mr. C. J. 
Warren, assisted by a group of men who have 
scoured the country for the latest and best ideas 
in office building construction. The building was 
erected by the J. J. Prindiville Co., who a short 
while ago completed the new armory on Com- 
monwealth Avenue for the State, and who bring 
to their task experience gained in erecting many 
of the larger and more beautiful buildings in our 
Commonwealth. 

The market district which the Fidelity Trust 
Company serves in a larger measure than any 
other part of the city, has maintained its general 
characteristics for a period of nearly two hun- 
dred years. The contour of the lower part of 
the city has been somewhat changed, reaching 
out more and more toward the harbor, and 
today, the water front which formerly extended 
up as far as the Custom House, is extended 
beyond the borders of Atlantic Avenue. Our 
institution now serves this district, being the 
nearest bank to the entire water front from 
Rowe's Wharf to the Charlestown Bridge. The 
* area covered by this district is almost entirely 
business and the possibilities for the develop- 



Page fifty-seven 




EDWIN T. Mcknight 

\'ice- President 



ment of banking interests in this territory is 
hardly to be measured by any precedent of the 
past. It is not too much to expect that within 
the next decade, the FideHty Trust Company 
will serve this area in a larger degree than any 
other banking institution in the city. 

The directors of the Fidelity Trust Company 
are justly proud of their bank and of its growth. 
They have sown and they have reaped, not 
tares or thorns: the seed has fallen upon 
fertile soil. The acorn which they have planted 
is growing into the mighty oak. Theirs is the 
just pride of accomplishment of making two 
blades of grass to grow where but one formerly 
grew. Thus cities, states and nations come 
into being. 

JAMES D. HENDERSON. 



Page fifty -nine 




LEONARD H. RHODES 
Vice-President 




JAMES M. YORK 
Vice-President 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 014 506 3 



